Interview With the President Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Editors and News Directors.

THE PRESIDENT. It's a pleasure to have you here. I understand this morning you've already been briefed, to some degree at least, on SALT and Multilateral Trade Negotiations and perhaps some other issues. And I want to welcome you here. This is somewhere between the 40th and 50th group that we've had come to the White House since I've been in office to give the editors around the Nation a briefing on matters that are of interest to you and your readers, or viewers or listeners.

I'd like just to make an opening statement, very brief.

ADMINISTRATION POLICIES

Our Nation is faced with several—both very important international issues and also very important domestic issues. I would say the most important of all is now the consummation, the signing, and the ratification of a SALT agreement.

Perhaps more important than anything that I will address while I'm President and perhaps the most important vote that the incumbent Members of the Senate will ever cast is concerning the ratification of SALT II.

It's a fair treaty, enforceable treaty, verifiable treaty, and rejection of this treaty would have a devastating, adverse effect on our Nation's relationship with the Soviet Union, on our ability to deal effectively with our allies, with uncommitted nations, and with the control of nuclear weaponry or explosives in the future throughout the world. That's one issue.

Of course, the Middle East peace treaties now signed between Israel and Egypt are extremely important to us and to stability in the Middle East—I think perhaps even indirectly to the rest of the world. We stand staunchly behind our allies and friends, Israel and Egypt.

We hope that the other nations in that region will soon realize the importance of these treaties. We'll do all we can to implement them fully and to demonstrate to all those who are interested that we believe in and are committed to a comprehensive peace settlement.

We have some additional problems that face NATO, although it's been substantially strengthened. Turkey is obviously one problem. They have economic matters to address jointly with us, with the Germans, the French, and others who are interested in the stability and strength both politically and economically of Turkey. They are important along with Greece in dealing with the southern flank of NATO, and we have that as a partial responsibility of our own.

Domestic affairs: The control of inflation is important. I would say that the most important single action that the Congress can take this session is to pass the hospital cost containment legislation. So far, we've been disappointed in the response of the House of Representatives. We hope that they will see that this is something they can contribute to the control of inflation.

And the unfortunate vote of the House yesterday on the gasoline rationing standby plan, which I would have the authority to evolve—it will take 8 or 9 months—and which could be implemented only if there was a genuine emergency, as assessed by me and the Congress jointly, was a very severe setback-as I said earlier—in my opinion, an embarrassment, indeed, a shock to me.

Those are a few of the many issues that we face. I think as we go through the coming months and years, we're going to see that the energy shortage is not a transient thing. It's not something that somebody caused deliberately. It's something that's with us permanently. And we are dealing with a limited supply of energy of all kinds; we are trying to shift away from reliance on imported oil toward greater production in our own country, shifting to alternate supplies, strong conservation of energy in all its forms.

We have announced this morning a 100-percent allocation of diesel fuel for farmers and for fishermen. This is a hundred percent of their needs. And, of course, next winter we'll be faced with a requirement that home heating oil needs be met. This will be guaranteed also for those who live in the colder regions of our country.

This means that with a given, limited supply of oil, the motorists who have perhaps unnecessary transportation will have to conserve, which they have not yet shown a willingness to do.

None of these issues are simple; none of them are easy. And I hope that when I go out of office, that the American people can say that I and the Congress have dealt with these issues courageously and have put the long-range interest of our country ahead of any short-term political gains we might derive from avoiding these kinds of problems which have been with us, some of them, for a long time.

I'll be glad to answer any questions that you might have now on any issue.

QUESTIONS

RHODESIA; MINORITY ISSUES

Q. Yes, Mr. President, I'm the editor of the California Voice, which is the oldest black newspaper west of the Rockies. So, my question is going to be dealing with what our readers think is important for them.

THE PRESIDENT. Good.

Q. Can I have your personal opinion on the Weber case? And I'd also like to know what do you tell blacks who are saying that a wave of conservatism in this country, Proposition 13 and Bakke, is starting to erode many of the gains that blacks made in the late sixties? That's my second part of the question. And my third and final part is—

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I'm not—you know we've got 35 people in the room. [Laughter] I'm not sure that we can let one person have three questions. Can I take my choice among your questions? [Laughter]

Q. Well, okay, in that case

THE PRESIDENT. Go ahead. I was just joking. Go ahead and ask the other question, and I will respond briefly.

Q. I guess I'll give you three short questions.

THE PRESIDENT. I noticed that.

Q. So, you can give me three short answers. [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. I'm not going to have time for an answer, though.

Q. Okay, and my third question is, is it true that within a month you are going to make a decision on whether to recognize the government in Rhodesia?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, the third one first. No, it's not a matter of recognition. The law requires me, at the end of the establishment of the government of Muzorewa and Smith and others, to make a determination of whether or not sanctions should be lifted, which means whether or not we should trade with them again. I will make that decision within 2 weeks after the newly elected government is installed.

On the trend in black and other minority rights, I think the trends are still in the right direction. I think we are now in a posture of consolidating the gains that have been made legally in guaranteeing equality of treatment, equality of rights of voting, employment, access to public funds. My own administration's been heavily committed to this proposition, to continue progress in a sustained fashion. I'll just give you a couple of quick examples.

One of the omissions has been that black-owned or minority-owned businesses didn't have access to Government contracts. In the local public works bill that we passed the first year I was in office, we built into the law a requirement that 10 percent of all the contracts would have to be allotted to businesses or contractors owned by minority stockholders. We have substantially increased our allocation of Federal funds to be deposited in minority owned banks, and I have issued a directive for a substantial increase in purchasing from minority-owned businesses.

We set as a goal for ourselves when we first came in office a tripling of Federal purchases of supplies, file cabinets, and so forth, from minority-owned businesses by 1980. We will reach that goal. The sum total then will be at least $3 billion in purchases from minority-owned businesses.

We've reorganized the equal employment opportunity agencies of the Federal Government, and I think it's greatly strengthened them. And we have had an unrestrained buildup in Federal allocation of funds for the enforcement of and the enhancement of basic rights of equality of treatment for minority groups.

I'm particularly concerned about Spanish-speaking Americans having been abused in the South and Southwest, and the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, the Governors, and I have all started a new program to make sure that these abuses that have been extant in the past are removed.

The Weber case is one on which the Attorney General will take a stand, and has. We want to protect the right of people for employment, not only for equal employment but also for affirmative action. We took a stand, as you know, in the Bakke case, that has been already resolved. So, I would say that we've got, in general, a commitment that has not been attenuated.

I'm now in the process of appointing judges, a large number of them. We're trying to make sure that Spanish-speaking people, blacks, and women are adequately represented in the circuit courts and also in district courts, and to ensure employment in the policymaking positions, including the regulatory agencies, of minorities that have—in the past, have been excluded.

HEATING OIL RESERVES

Q. Mr. President, I'm Merrill Lockhard from Nashua, New Hampshire. This 100-percent allocation of diesel fuel for the fishing industry and farmers, is this going to have an adverse effect on the supplies of heating oil—-

THE PRESIDENT. No.

Q. — or is it going to have any effect at all?

THE PRESIDENT. No, the heating oil reserves by next October will be adequate to supply New Hampshire, New England, and the other colder regions of our country with their full needs throughout the winter of 1979, 1980.

ENERGY SECURITY TRUST FUND

Q. Mr. President, my name is Mick De Rienzo. I'm from New Jersey. And in the northwestern part of New Jersey, we have no mass transit. People depend on their car to get to and from work and do shopping and things of that type. Does the Government have to plan anything in the fields of mass transit?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. In addition to substantial increases in the allocation of funds for rapid transit, mass transit, that's already been put into effect, under the windfall profits tax, which I now expect to pass through the Congress, we will establish an energy security fund designed to do three things. One is to meet the needs of very low income families who are adversely impacted by increases in oil price; secondly, to set up a research and development program for the development of alternate supplies of energy; and, thirdly, to improve rapid transit or mass transit.

So, those three basic functions of the reserve fund will be implemented in addition to the funds already allocated for that purpose.

SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY

Q. Fremont Power, Indianapolis. Mr. President, I can imagine several quick answers you could give to this one. I wonder if you'd give us your candid opinion as to whether or not Ted Kennedy is going to go for the nomination in '80 or not?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think so. Senator Kennedy has announced many times that he did not have any intention to run, that if I ran, that he would give me his support.

ASSISTANCE FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS; DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

Q. Sir, Paul Wright from Greenville, South Carolina. Assuming we do have a Cabinet-level office for education, what will be your position on the private school movement on the secondary level in this country, sir?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes. Well, my position wouldn't change. I served as Governor of Georgia and, obviously, treated the private schools as a necessary part of the educational program. I have set aside, as Governor of Georgia, an allocation of financial resources for the private colleges of Georgia that began with $400 per student allocated out of State funds and then increased while I was Governor to $600 per student per year for tuition at the higher level.

I'm not in favor of the Federal Government helping to finance the routine operation of private schools. But I think there's a very strong role for them to play, and, of course, in some areas where the constitutional requirements permit it, we have participated in meeting the needs of private schools, partial needs in the field of health, food, some books and training supplies, and so forth, at the elementary and secondary level. I think there's a strong role to be played by private schools.

My own inclination is to keep the Federal Government out of the administration and the decisionmaking involving public education, and this is one of the guarantees that I would like to carry out when a new department is set up.

I started my public career as a member of the local county school board in Sumter County back in the early sixties, late fifties. In my judgment, the absence of an identifiable department of education in Washington is one of the reasons that we have had so many lawsuits and altercations which increasingly have involved the Federal Government into the affairs of a local school system.

I think, had I been able, as a member of the school board, or had I been able, as a chairman of a committee in the Georgia Senate or as a Governor of Georgia, to come to Washington and sit down with a person whose unique responsibility was to education as a Cabinet Secretary, we could have avoided some of the altercations that arose that couldn't be resolved and had to go into the Federal courts.

So, I believe that this is a very good move in the right direction.

Also, we have computed that the establishment of a department of education would result in the saving of about $100 million in administrative costs. And the elevation, I think, of education to a higher visibility by a Cabinet-level officer being around this table with me every 2 weeks would be a very healthy commitment of our Nation to better education.

We've got some problems in education. But all of these reasons—and I could name others—speak well,.I think, for a separate department. It would let the Secretary of Health and Welfare then concentrate much more on those two closely related issues. And I believe that that separation is logical and would work better.

I've served as Governor where they were separated. I've served as President where they were all together. And I'm basing my opinion partially on my own experience.

WAGE AND PRICE CONTROLS

Q. Mr. President, Paul Gruchow from Minnesota. On the matter of inflation, I wonder if you could say what convinces you that price controls will not work or are not a practical answer at the moment.

THE PRESIDENT. Well, they've never worked. We've tried them on many occasions. The only time they ever have worked is during an actual time of war, where you had to allocate not only prices and wages but also materials themselves, where the war effort got first priority and where many nonvolunteers were conscripted and sent overseas to endanger their own lives. And I think in that kind of an environment, you would not want to have anything other than minimum profit being derived from either employment or trade.

I'd like to point out something that's often overlooked. I do not have the authority to implement mandatory wage and price controls. When President Nixon did it shortly before, I think, the '68 election year, he did have the authority and this was—I think it was 1970, shortly before the '72 election. After that happened, the experiences with wage and price controls were so bad that the Congress did not see fit to renew the Presidential authority. And we still are suffering from the implementation, for instance, of price controls on beef. The farmers depleted their herds so severely that we still have a very serious beef shortage.

If any proposal was made in the Congress of a serious nature to pass wage and price controls, it could not possibly actually pass the Congress under any circumstances that I can envision. And merchants and others would automatically begin to raise their prices in an uncontrollable fashion to build a high price base on which to predicate future price increases.

So, under no circumstances would I ever approve the Congress passing that law, and I would be very reluctant to ever see it implemented unless our Nation is in a problem area that endangers our security.

Q. May I follow that up just briefly?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes, you can follow it up.

Q. How do you convince the public to agree to wage constraints in the face of news of record profits, which is how the price control question comes up for the public?

THE PRESIDENT. It's not easy. [Laughter] I don't claim it to be. But I can say that in those items where prices can be restrained voluntarily, under understood guidelines, we've been very successful.

We have carefully monitored, for instance, the Fortune 500, the 500 biggest corporations. We have found them to be in compliance. We are now with increasing experience able—and with an increasing capability in the Council on Wage and Price Stability—able to monitor the middle-sized and smaller companies.

We are increasing our publicity about it. And when we have found a few companies potentially out of compliance or actually out of compliance, when we've brought that to their attention in a forceful way, and they have reversed themselves.

One company in California actually refunded money. Sears, Roebuck, when I called the head of that company and said, "We believe you're out of compliance," not only reduced their prices in retail stores but actually have reduced their prices in the existent catalog, which couldn't be reprinted. We've just had a similar experience with Giant Foods, and Giant Foods has now agreed to comply.

So, on the price side, we've pretty well helped considerably already. If you would compare the wage settlements this year with what they were a year or 2 years ago, we've had a substantial deceleration in wage increases. Of 90 or so wage settlements-some very large, some relatively small—that I have monitored or that we have monitored, at least 80 of them are completely within the guidelines without any question whatsoever.

And I think even the Teamsters' settlement-you can argue whether it's round or fiat—but even in the Teamsters' settlement, there was a substantial reduction in the size of the increase, compared to previous wage increases without constraints.

We have had excellent response. The things that have been going up so high in price are beef, which I've already covered, which kind of leads food; fresh fruit and vegetables, because we've had two succeeding, extraordinarily severe winter seasons that cut down production; and oil, which is controlled outside our own country. And these material prices and supply prices obviously have caused us great concern. But the present wage level, the present price level, and also the ones in the months ahead, are substantially lower than they would have been without the wage and price guidelines.

I think the response has been responsible. And I would like, obviously, for the wage settlements and price settlements to be even lower. We have tightened up as we've gone along with more experience, and we've found a ready compliance.

STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION

Q. Mr. President, could we have your assessment on SALT and whether you can get it through the Senate in much the same form in which you intend to sign it?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, you know, we've negotiated this SALT treaty now for going on 7 years, under three Presidents, and it's been negotiated in the most extreme specificity, much greater specific, detail negotiation than ever existed with the limited test ban or SALT I or the ABM treaty.

There's been a hard negotiation, a tough negotiation on both sides, and the Soviets, I think, as have we, have been not only tough but fair. We have gotten the best deal we can. It's not perfect. I could have written a unilateral treaty if I didn't have to consult with the Soviets, that it would have been more attractive to us and less attractive to them. But for the Senate to expect the Soviets substantially to change their posture just because we unilaterally want them to do so is fruitless and, I think, would cause a rejection of SALT treaty completely.

I think the treaty is to our great advantage and also to the Soviets' great advantage. And I need not go into all the details of SALT II, but I think that it's, at the least, very fair, well-balanced, stable, verifiable, adequate, and a move in the right direction. It leads to SALT III, which will be even better.

Rejection of the treaty, however, will have the most devastating consequences to our country and, I think, to world peace. It will sever, to a substantial degree, the workable relationship between ourselves and the Soviet. It will shake the confidence of our own NATO Allies in our ability to get along reasonably well with the Soviets and leave them in an increasingly vulnerable position. It would make it almost impossible for us to pursue successfully the control of nuclear weapon development in countries like India, Pakistan, Iraq, Argentina, Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea, and other nations who have the technical ability to produce nuclear weapons, but have refrained from doing so because they saw an overall, worldwide restraint.

If we show that we are not willing to restrain our own nuclear arsenal, when it's to our advantage and the Soviets' both to do it—we would already have several thousand nuclear weapons—there's no way that I could go to someone like Prime Minister Desai in India, with whom I have had long discussions on this, and say, "We have set a good example for you, now you restrain yourself and don't ever develop another explosion in India." It would be almost impossible for me to do it. So, it would wipe out any real good opportunity for us to constrain nuclear weaponry.

And as you know, there are three ways that we can compete with the Soviet Union. One is militarily through a prospective or actual war, which we both want to avoid. The other is what we are doing. We are meeting them competitively in the political realm and also in the philosophical and moral and ethnic realm. And that's where the competition goes on.

If the Soviets should sign SALT II and, in effect, ratify it—which is, I think, inevitable-and if we should sign it and then reject it, we would lose our competitive ability to reach effectively the hearts and minds of other people around the world who will be making a choice between us, on the one hand, and the Soviets, on the other, in the future for military, political, trade alliances; because the Soviets can put themselves through a massive propaganda effort, which would be inevitable, too, in their role of a powerful but fair and peace-loving nation.

We would be put in the role of a powerful nation that was, in effect, in their opinion, a warmonger who refused even to participate in an equitable restraint on the most destructive weapons on Earth. And how we could deal effectively as a nation in competition with the Soviets after we rejected the SALT treaty is something that I cannot understand and which I would hate to have to face as a President.

So, I am asking the Senators—the ones that were sitting around this table day before yesterday—"Before you vote on SALT, take yourselves out of the role of a Senator or out of the role of the chairman or a member of the Armed Services Committee or the Foreign Relations Committee, and put yourself in the position of the President, who would have to implement a national policy and an international policy after our Nation was crippled, in effect, by the consequences of a SALT II rejection."

This is undoubtedly the most important single issue that I will ever have to face as President, unless we are faced with actual war. And I hope that every American will join in with me, not in a quiescent way, just observing what's going on, but in an active way. And I particularly hope the news media will assess the details of the SALT agreement, the consequences of either passage or rejection, and let your voices be heard in the strongest possible way.

It transcends partisanship; it transcends the necessary objectivity of the news media toward politicians. And I hope that legitimately, within the bounds of the role of the news media, that you will actively support and promote the ratification of the SALT treaty.

M. BARIO. Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT. Thank you.